INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
PAGE 2 Business Consulting as a Growth Strategy
PAGE 3 PRINT ADVANTAGE:
Ultimate Guide to Marketing with Print PAGE 4 FEATURED NEW EQUIPMENT:
Die Cutting & Packaging PAGE 5 At Your Service PAGE 6 Stop Focusing and Get In the Flow
PAGE 7 Ditch the To-Do List PAGE 8 FEATURED BRANDED MERCHANDISE:
Soft Bound JournalBook
N E W S L E T T E R
J u l y 2 0 2 1
Under the
Down to Business
Have you ever thought of using your experience to help other business professionals? You could see substantial business growth as a result, and you’ll gain leadership influence as a professional in your community.
Before you dive in, however, it is essential to know your strengths.
Don’t overextend yourself, and only offer help with things that come easily to you. Offer targeted help, picking one thing to help them with, not fixing their entire business. Keep good time management with solid boundaries by agreeing to how much time you will spend helping them and then stick to it.
recruit a team to help in areas where you are your weakest, or for tasks when you’re not willing to give away your time if they need more help than you can provide.
Lastly, don’t force them if they’re not receptive to your ideas for help.
Change is hard, and accountability is even more challenging. Sometimes there is a reason business
professionals struggle. Smile politely and let them know you’re here when they are ready.
It is important to mention that acting as a consultant is more hands-on than simply giving advice. You must be willing to spend some time working with them and working on
Your expert knowledge can grow your business when you strategically give it away to help others.
BUSINESS CONSULTING AS A GROWTH STRATEGY
Tips for Helping Others Grow:
» Set a goal that is specific and measurable.
» Establish a time frame with an end date.
» Use progress reports at regular intervals.
» Celebrate at the end of the process.
Branding
Consistency means better recognition. Ensure all items you present to customers follow a color standard with images and shapes that reflect your brand vision and mission. Volume helps.
Put your brand on as many things as you can, as long as those things lift your brand and story.
Design
Tell a story with every design using the highest quality images, best ad copy, and print materials that reflect your offer’s value. The visual and tangible message can speak louder than your words.
Ad Copy
Words matter, and your ad copy should speak to your company and product truths. Action verbs and powerful statements inspire
your customers to buy or join you. Create strong call-to-action statements and be clear about how you need them to respond.
Be Specific
Don’t try to cram everything there is to say on every print piece.
Focus your attention and your purpose with each piece. Leave something to the imagination.
Create intrigue and a solid call to action, and customers will seek out the information you’re dying to tell them.
Campaigns
Create campaigns that build on each other, being intentional to deepen your message and support your vision with branded resources that carry your voice.
Let this abbreviated road map open up vast avenues for building your next campaign.
“Hire great people and give them freedom to be awesome.”
— Andrew Mason
ULTIMATE GUIDE TO MARKETING WITH PRINT
Business Quotes
“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”
—Jeff Bezos
“If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.”
—Howard Schultz
“The keys to brand success are self- definition, transparency, authenticity and accountability.”
—Simon Mainwaring
“Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with a passion.”
—Brian Chesky
“Being a great place to work is the difference between being a good company and a great company.”
—Brian Kristofek
“There’s no magic formula for great company culture. The key is just to treat your staff how you would like to be treated.”
—Richard Branson
“You have to see failure as the beginning and the middle, but never entertain it as an end.”
Print Advantage
DIE CUTTING & PACKAGING
Featured New Equipment
Introducing our new inline die cutter, folder, and gluer.
Here are a few of the specialties running on the new machine:
All Styles of Pocket Folders • Courier Envelopes with Double Sided Tape • Magnets Tipped Into Mailers Belt Sleeves • Paperboard Boxes • Two-Sided Tape Products • Room Key Holders
Custom Shape Door Hangers • and much more!
Call or email our team at Sun to see what we can design, print, die cut, and package for you!
Fast Turn Times
If time is critical for you, we are here to help! Our process includes digital, sheetfed or web printed sheets going straight to the die cutter. With inline finishing, the press sheet turns into a pocket folder, mailer, or anything else in one pass on one machine!
High Quality
Our die cutting process is KNICKLESS so your beautifully designed pieces will have a smooth cut all around the finished piece. Paper waste is stripped away and sent to recycling while the piece is advanced into the finishing unit.
Long Run Capability
Have an order of 50,000 or 500,000 pieces? This is no problem with fast run speeds and multiple shifts to get it done. Just give our team a call!
Automated Finishing
With automation in mind, our goal is to finish everything inline, with one pass.
Whether it is gluing a die cut mailer shut or tipping in a magnet, business card
or 3D sunglasses, we aim to have everything ready for mailing when it comes
off the machine.
Business Funnies
®“I’ll have the double-guilt scoop.”
The Power of Complementary Goods and
Services
Yes, you read that right; free stuff has power. However, not ALL
complementary goods and services are made equal. It is important to evaluate your free offerings through the lens of whether or not they actually benefit your customers.
One example of a successful
complementary offering is the Apple iPod product paired with iTunes’ content delivery service. While it may be an older reference, consider where the industry went after this pair’s launch!
There were billions of iTunes users before it was replaced by Apple Music,
AT YOUR SERVICE
Customer Care
Are you settling for “good enough”? It’s time to start thinking
“better”! Would a brochure or a flyer work better for your product? Does a paper or a laminated menu work better for your needs?
It doesn’t matter what the print project is; if you’re looking for better, let the experts in print take you across the finish line with superior design services, unique, high-quality products, and the ultimate advantage over your competition!
When your message must reach your audience, print is
your solution!
While it’s common to have problems focusing at times, the obsession with staying focused is a false narrative. You don’t have to be ultra-focused all the time to be productive.
This hyper-focus way of thinking also affects how you treat yourself when you are unable to focus. Do you beat yourself up for failing to dial in when you wanted to? Sometimes all it takes is preparing for the task in a different way to help you focus.
All you need to do is find your flow—
that is, the rhythm that keeps you working on a task no matter what else is going on. This flow is a better way of thinking about focus because it is more flexible and lets you be at ease with your work. Here are a few ways to get yourself in the flow:
Unfocus Your Brain
Focus is such a rigid concept, whereas flow needs space. Allowing your brain the fluidity of being able to go anywhere it wants for a time will free up creativity.
Constructive Daydreaming
Allow yourself to travel to a place in your mind and imagine all the wonderful experiences that could happen there. Many use a beach, forest, or a city they traveled to in the past that brings joy to their memories.Block Distractions
When you are ready to take on that focus-laden task, turn off devices like your email and phone, and even lock your door if necessary. Make your environment free of any possible disruptions that would take you out of the flow.
Health & Wellness
Knowing what happened this day in the past will help you learn about how far we’ve come, give you some interesting tidbits to talk about when conversations lag, and make you more intelligent every day. You can browse by categories, such as sports, technology, entertainment, science, and more. Events come with images and facts, and you can set notifications or check the app whenever you want.
Today in History
iOS
Train your brain to remember things better and find information when you need it. This app starts with a 10-minute test that evaluates where you are in your cognitive ability and memory and builds a skills program suited for your needs. Say you can’t remember names very well; this app will train the areas of the brain that build those recall “muscles.” Lumosity can train you whenever you have a little time to spare or when you want to give it specific focus.
Lumosity
Android & iOS
Delivering daily, bite-sized art examples with bios, history of the work, and more, DailyArt is the perfect way to become an expert or to build on the knowledge you already have.
With a library of more than 2,000 works, DailyArt is a fun journey in art appreciation and exploration of the masters across time and culture.
DailyArt
Android & iOS
Apps Scene
Stop Focusing
and Get In the
Flow
There is something about lists that elicit a feeling of procrastination, and sometimes even rebellion, against the items you’ve listed.
You know it needs to get done, but you don’t want to do it. Or, instead of completing these tasks, you do other jobs not even on your list when your day started.
Try scheduling your time for task types instead of giving yourself
“orders” that you already want to ignore. Being productive is about doing activities, not listing them on a piece of paper. People tend to struggle with knowing how long each task will take to complete, which is also why a list won’t give you an accurate picture of your day’s productivity. If you schedule your time instead, it is much easier
to accomplish the necessary tasks you have to do.
If you know you need to make some phone calls, schedule that time on your daily calendar specifically for calling your customers or prospects. If you have a weekly presentation, then schedule preparation time as a calendar item. When your calendar is blocked out, you know what to do during that time, and others are less likely to pull you away.
Don’t forget to schedule breaks and fun. This is also an advantage of planning your time. If you know that all of your tasks have their own block of time, then you will be able to focus on enjoying it when you are on scheduled fun.
Working Backwards:
Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside
Amazon
by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr Amazon insiders Colin Bryar and Bill Carr, both former executives who started working at the retail giant in the late 1990s, have compiled a list of leadership principles that they learned over their years of employment there.
Their book Working Backwards:
Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon is a practical breakdown of how Amazon became the dominating force it is.
Bryar and Carr reveal the four primary progressive principles that governed Amazon’s innovation and growth. They detail why customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence helped Amazon rise to such heights.
Filled with stories of being in the planning rooms and on the playing field of creating innovative products like Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Web Services, and other successful properties, Working Backwards is a field guide
DITCH THE TO-DO LIST
How many times do you put together a to-do list and still not get the tasks done? How stressful is it to end the day without all of the boxes checked, only to add the items onto the next day’s list of to-dos?
Books in Review
At the Office
Under The Sun Newsletter
Sun Solutions 345 Dreher Road
West Columbia, SC 29169
Phone803.791.1786 Local 800.523.7058 Toll Free E-mail
Letters to the Editor
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SUN SOLUTIONS IS PROUD TO BE A*Please note that anniversaries are recognized beginning at 3 years, followed by 5 years and then onward in increments of 5.
